How To Measure Happiness At Work

Simply, employee happiness, also known as employee satisfaction or employee engagement, is about how happy your employees are in their job and at the company. If you can quantify the happiness of your employees you can gauge how connected they are, how they feel coming to work each day, their opinions and perceptions of the company. This can help you identify your company’s strengths and weaknesses and take steps to make positive changes to improve your business and company culture. Happy employees who enjoy coming to work every day are generally thought to produce more high quality work and be better engaged. There are lots of different ways to quantify a workforce’s happiness. So we’ve outlined some methods below, which might help you.

Employee surveys

Employee surveys can be used to question staff about their level of satisfaction in their role, their level of engagement at the company and their general wellbeing. Once this data has been collated it can be used to highlight any potential issues and key areas for improvement. 

This is the most tried and tested way to measure employee happiness, but it needs to be done regularly. Our workplaces are constantly changing, so one survey a year is insufficient. 

Instead, company-wide surveys should be sent out several times a year and changes should be implemented consistently on a reactive basis. Ideally, surveys will be combined with other methods of measuring employee happiness to give the most accurate results. 

Individual performance

Taking a deep dive into the performance at an individual level may indicate how happy employees are. Use any metrics you have at your disposal, such as productivity, quality of work, errors and mistakes and project completion rate.

Other useful employee information which could indicate unhappiness, including employee absenteeism and retention rate or turnover, should also be looked at, as well as hiring data and overall company reputation. 

Team happiness

Employee happiness can be measured at team level, too. Although employees may feel it is difficult to discuss their feelings and personal opinions in a professional setting, honest conversations within teams are to be encouraged and will yield more truthful data. 

Daily temperature checks can be instigated and measured over the course of a week to track team members’ moods, as well as one-on-one meetings organised with individuals who appear to be struggling to discuss how their concerns can be addressed. 

Negative behaviour

Negative behaviours at work often cause unhappiness amongst employees. Look into HR complaints to target problems and encourage staff to report discriminatory behaviour in the workplace as soon as they see it. Complaint records should be kept track of and followed up on immediately to eradicate problem behaviours. 

A positive and equal workplace fosters employee happiness, so establishing a diverse and equal workplace should be a top priority, while good work should be rewarded and employees celebrated.